Here’s What Happened to the Exxon-funded EU Think Tanks After It Pledged Not To Fund Climate Denial

This is the second part of DeSmog UK’s series mapping Exxon’s ties to EU think tanks and lobby groups. Here we explore what happened to Exxon’s EU think tank ties after it pledged to stop funding climate denial.

Pressure is mounting on ExxonMobil to explain why the oil giant funded climate denial around the world years after its own scientists established global warming was real.

Exxon has a long history of funding climate denial and last September it was revealed that it did so despite a full scientific knowledge about the impacts of manmade climate change in the 1970s’ and ‘80s.

This prompted the New York Attorney General to subpoena ExxonMobil to “determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.” A similar investigation has also been launched in California.

These revelations tell us what Exxon knew. The investigations in New York and California are asking ‘what did Exxon do?’

Exxon in the EU

So, while the oil giant has been getting a lot of heat in the U.S. for funding climate denial, this DeSmogUK investigation takes these questions across the Atlantic, and asks: what has ExxonMobil been up to in Europe?

The past 10 years are pretty murky when it comes to deciphering ExxonMobil’s climate denial activities in Europe.

In 2007, the oil giant pledged to stop funding climate denial groups in response to pressure from shareholder activists. However, eight years later the company was found to have given more than $2.3m (£1.7m) to an American lobbying group and members of Congress that deny climate change and block efforts to tackle the issue.

It begs the question: has ExxonMobil been up to the same tricks in Europe?

Other Brussels-based climate-sceptic think tanks Exxon is believed to have given money to at the time include the European Enterprise Institute, the Institut Economique Molinari (which had close ties to the Centre for The New Europe) and the International Council for Capital Formation – a subsidiary of the American Council for Capital Formation, a prominent opponent of the Kyoto Protocol.

In previous years Corporate Europe Observatory reports that Exxon’s European expenses also went to the umbrella free market think tank The Stockholm Network (previous members included the Institute of Economic Affairs and the IPN), and online free-market magazine TCSDaily.com (formerly Tech Central Station).

But it seems that since 2006 many of these think tanks have shut down.

The Centre for The New Europe has shut down while the Stockholm Network seems, at the very least, to have gone out of public view. It no longer has a website, yet a 2014 Forbes article (linking to the now-broken website) cites it as one of the largest ‘market-oriented networks’ in Europe. Meanwhile, the International Council for Capital Formation doesn’t seem to have been active since 2006 although its website is still accessible unlike the other two.

Exxon and the IPN

Perhaps the most memorable of these think tanks, however, is the story behind the climate sceptic IPN, which was founded in 2001 by Julian Morris and Roger Bate of the British free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Between 2003 and 2006, IPN pocketed almost £275,008 ($400,000) from Exxon. In 2006 alone, the oil giant donated £65,314 ($95,000) to the IPN. But any funding after this was in serious jeopardy after the oil company’s pledge to stop funding climate denial.

However, his plans were revealed in a leaked letter where Horner described Europe as an “opportunity” adding that it “would be like Neil Armstrong, it’s a developing untapped frontier” and that “US companies need someone they can trust, and it’s just a den of thieves over there”.

Horner is currently listed at the Director of External Relations for the policy counsel of the European Enterprise Institute (CEI’s EU counterpart) – which, according to Corporate Europe Observatory, received funding from Exxon in 2005.

So what about the Lisbon Council and TCSDaily.com?

The last year that Exxon is listed as a donor of the Lisbon Council was 2006. However, the Council has received money from other oil giants since 2006 – Shell from 2006-2009 and Schlumberger in 2007.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE